


look your demons in the eyes

by Good Morning Hawkins (quodpersortem)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Character, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, No Smut, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other, Pre-Slash, missing person case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 20:16:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodpersortem/pseuds/Good%20Morning%20Hawkins
Summary: Mrs. Wheeler disappears on a Tuesday. No one finds her.(original post)





	look your demons in the eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags before reading! This is not a happy story.
> 
> Title from Ray Lamontagne's Empty ([youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY1V0Y7hscw))

Mrs. Wheeler disappears on a Tuesday.

Hawkins doesn’t notice. The hustle and bustle of a small Indiana town continues. Classes finish, then after-school electives. Mike heads down to the Arcade while Nancy buys chewing gum and talks to Jonathan about how she can’t blow large pink bubbles.

No one notices she’s gone until dinner.

Mike is the first to ask. “Where is mom?”

They look for her. All rooms are empty, and so is the backyard. She’s not at her friends, at her sister’s, she hasn’t decided to visit her father.

No one saw her leave. No one hears from her after Tuesday, January 22, 1985.

-

Mr. Wheeler phones the police.

Ted Wheeler’s face is pale, the creases deeper than ever. “I think she left me,” he confesses. It sounds real and raw.

“I think she needed a break,” Nancy states, her voice strong. Hopper isn’t deceived; her fingers shake around the paper cup, the dark circles under her eyes betray the night she spent up, waiting for her mom to return.

Mike whispers. “I think the Upside Down got her.” It’s fast, difficult to understand. “I think—I think the demogorgons got her. Or Dart!”

Callahan rubs at his eyes, muttering about  _kids_ , while Hopper takes notes of it all.

People don’t vanish into thin air in Hawkins, after all.

-

There are no traces of forced entry. Ted is a suspect until his alibi is confirmed.

“She ran away,” is the explanation. It is plausible, and it could be— _should_ be—the truth.

Hopper doesn’t believe himself. His guts twist up, that feeling inside screaming  _foul play, foul play_ , but there’s no way to prove it.

-

The Wheeler house is dark at all times.

Nancy spends her time with the Byers. Mike sleeps on Dustin’s floor, or Will’s, or in Lucas’s guest bedroom. Ted’s hours are progressively longer until he sleeps at his desk, or in his car. He never sleeps in the bed once warmed by his wife.

There are no new leads. There are no signs of life.

 -

 

 

 

Almost tripping over a patch of elevated forest ground, Billy catches Steve before he falls. Smirks at him. He leads Steve down to the grove, its water shimmering in the March sunlight.

“C’mon,” he screams. “I’ll race you there, dipstick!”

Steve laughs, almost choking on it.

Billy doesn’t care that Steve nearly stumbled across his secret, buried nearby. He doesn’t, because Steve’s hand is warm in his own and the body of water he’s leading him to lies cold and waiting.


End file.
